All the health experts tout the importance of eating organic, but not everyone can afford the cost to do so. Award winning journalist and Michigan native Tracie McMillan wanted to go beyond the food on her plate and explore the national priorities that put it there. The American Way of Eating chronicles McMillan’s own experiences in California farm fields, the produce aisle of a Detroit Walmart and the kitchen of New York City’s Applebee’s. Michigan-born and Brooklyn-based writer Tracie McMillan has won numerous awards for her writing in publications ranging from The New York Times to O, The Oprah Magazine. She is a Senior Fellow at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism and a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan.

In Farm City, author Novella Carpenter recounts how she converted her ramshackle, weed-choked backyard in inner-city Oakland to an efficient farm complete with veggies, turkeys, ducks and pigs. This 2009 New York Times “Top 10 Book” heralds the joys and tribulations of a self-sustaining lifestyle.

Novella Carpenter’s work has appeared in salon.com, sfgate.com, and Food and Wine magazine. She is also a member of the Biofuel Oasis Cooperative, a biodiesel station and urban farming feed store in Berkeley, CA. Carpenter also keeps a blog about happenings on her farm, GhostTown Farm at www.novellacarpenter.com.

Two Books, One Community

What if the entire community read the same books? Find out! Join Reading Together, a county-wide book club led by the Kalamazoo Public Library. Since 2003, thousands of people from all walks of life have read and discussed the selected books and attended hundreds of events. Please join us.

Planning for the Reading Together 2104 events calendar and author visits are underway. Visit ReadingTogether.us for updates.